CLEAN hand-made clothes from 2020's coolest under-the-radar brand
Thanksgiving pre-sale exclusive with artisan-jawn kings Graziano & Gutiérrez
HAPPY THANKSGIVING — we are coming at u today with a Blackbird Spyplane Gratitude Special. What about it will make you so grateful ?? What about it makes it so special ?? 2 things:
1. At the end of a calamitous & vexing year, we’re all here, right now, enjoying each others’ psychic-parasocial company via a miraculous “Blackbird Mindmeld” whose primary characteristics are shared Mach 3+ taste-levels, deep mutual respect, and an amalgamation of the human soul’s most positive possible vibes.
2. Our friends at the extremely sick Portland brand Graziano & Gutiérrez have chosen THIS DAY & THIS NEWSLETTER to launch their FW20 collection. Longtime readers know that Graziano & Gutiérrez hand-make beautiful unisex clothing using artisan textiles spun on pedal looms by family craftspeople in Oaxaca.
We wrote about Graziano & Gutiérrez in the newsletter a few months ago, and — thanks to how dope their clothes are and how “unbeatable” our readers are — the patented “Blackbird Spyplane Bump” hit HARD and they wound up selling out their entire SS20 line within a few days. So we r stoked to report that the first fat chunk of Graziano & Gutiérrez FW20 pieces will be available on their site this coming Monday.
IF you are a Classified-Tier Subscriber, u do not need to wait and risk the most-fire joints from “G&G Drop One” selling out 😱— ‘cause you can cop from it right now, here ☺️ :
What struck us when we first saw Graziano & Gutiérrez’s clothes were their excellent patterns, which are bold without ever getting goofy — like many Blackbird SpyFriends, we f**k heavy with BODE (you can read our interview with Emily Bode here), and G&G’s stuff lit up similar parts of our brains.
That’s because, like Emily, they take fabrics originally made for strictly domestic uses — tablecloths, bedspreads, etc. — and CUT ‘EM INTO BEAUTIFUL ANDROGYNOUS JOINTS, like the new red & tan workshirt (above) & olive-striped camp shirt (below)….
Those kinds of patterns remain IN POSITION in the new collection, but there’s also a shift toward more minimal vibes, with a bunch of pieces whose appeal is all about texture, color, and small finishing details like contrast-stitching — here’s the same FW20 workshirt, but done in brown (below left, *coming in a later drop*) and miel (below right), with coconut buttons…
Here’s the same shirt again, this time cut in a very dope SUBTLY VIBRATING orange-flecked INDIGO: Alejandro says, “It was actually the selvedge of another fabric, and I ended up asking for a full fabric like that: Instead of doing both the weft and the warp in the same color, we used two different ones to create that texture.”
The line began as a thesis project back in 2018 when Sam Graziano and Alejandro Gutiérrez first met at design school in Cincinnati. Sam, who still lives in Ohio, has a background in “active, outdoor and menswear design” — a.k.a. GORPED-OUT BONA-FIDES. Alejandro, based in Portland, has a background in “pattern-making and sewing as well as sourcing and working with hand-woven textiles” — a.k.a. WIZARDLY JAWNSCRAFT FUNDAMENTALS. The two “met in the middle” …
Their main inspiration “is Mexican culture and tradition,” Alejandro says, “and the patterns are sometimes centuries old. Many can be found in the ruins of the indigenous groups throughout Mexico.”
Another big inspiration is “workwear silhouettes and constructions found in Mexico and the US in the 1800s and 1900s” that Sam & Alejandro “try to blend with respectful takes on traditional Mexican” garments and aesthetics.
The first drop also includes garmies cut from “non-artisan, natural-fiber textiles” like the hemp/organic-cotton canvas trucker jacket above…
“We currently work with Familia Bautista Martinez out of Teotitlan de Valle, Oaxaca,” Alejandro says, “who have focused on hand-woven textiles for over 50 years. The quality’s incredible, so we wanted to provide a new platform for these traditional fabrics.” (They also “work with an artisan group out of San Andres Larrainzar, Chiapas,” via a CHIAPAS-WEAVER PLUG named Jorge Giacobone.)
This s**t is so good. We love that it’s 100% unisex and that so much of it is multi-season, too — e.g., we would rock the f**k out of the miel drawstring “hippie” joggers above, FIRST for kicking it autumnally around the cribbo and then as a “TUCK YOUR WHOLE SUMMER IN” warmer-weather staple…
Also, props to Sam & Alejandro for keeping their fingers on the d*mn pulse and crafting an on-trend BEAUTIFUL roomy neutral-color single-pleat trouser, accessorized here BRILLIANTLY with a hand-woven “belt / camera-strap / whatever-you-use-it-for” that Alejandro sourced from Merida, Yucatán. FYI this pant is NOT part of the first Winter Drop, but it’s too popping to not preview….
“Sam and I work really closely together even though he works remote for now,” says Alejandro. “Currently I’m the only sewer we have. Every order is cut, sewn and shipped by myself.” In other words the ratio of “SMALL-SCALE OPERATION” to “BIG VIBEY SLAPPERS” here is … GARGANTUAN.
The first Graziano & Gutiérrez FW20 drop will be available at their webstore this Monday, Nov. 30.
The last season sold out pronto & these hand-loomed Mexican fabrics are limited, but BBSP Cla$$ified-Recon-Tier Subscribers can cop it before anyone else — here:
ALSO 🥥 ICYMI 🥥 we are giving away a George Nelson Coconut Chair with Herman Miller to 1 Cla$$ified Subscriber — you can toss yr name in the VIRTUAL BUCKET HAT here.
And the full “Blackbird Spyplane Interview” archive — featuring Jerry Seinfeld, André 3000, Nathan Fielder, Rashida Jones, Emily Bode, Ezra Koenig, Online Ceramics and more — is here. PEACE !!